ago with Mr.
Reitz, then a judge, afterwards President of the Orange Free State, and
now State Secretary of the Transvaal, in which Mr. Reitz admitted that
it was his object to overthrow the British power and expel the British
flag from South Africa. Mr. Schreiner adds; "During the seventeen years
that have elapsed I have watched the propaganda for the overthrow of
British power in South Africa being ceaselessly spread by every possible
means, the press, the pulpit, the platform, the schools, the colleges,
the legislature; and it has culminated in the present war, of which Mr.
Reitz and his co-workers are the origin and the cause."

The Retrocession of the Transvaal (1881) gave a strong impulse to this
movement, and encouraged President Kruger in his persistent efforts
since that date to foster it. A friend of the late General Joubert,--in
a letter which I have read,--wrote of Mr. Kruger as "the man who, for
more than twenty years past, has persistently laboured to drive in the
wedge between the two races. It has been his deliberate policy
throughout."

I always wish that I could separate the memory of that truly great man,
Mr. Gladstone, from this Act of his Administration. Few people cherish
his memory with more affectionate admiration than I do. Independently of
his great intellect, his eloquence, and his fidelity in following to its
last consequences a conviction which had taken possession of him, I
revered him because he seemed like King Saul, to stand a head and
shoulders above all his fellows,--not like King Saul in physical, but in
moral stature. Pure, honourable and strong in character and principles,
a sincere Christian, he attracted and deserved the affection and loyalty
of all to whom purity and honour are dear. I may add that I may speak of
him, in a measure also as a personal friend of our family. I have
memories of delightful intercourse with him at Oxford, when he
represented that constituency, and later, in other places and at other
times.

I recall, however, an occasion in which a chill of astonishment and
regret fell upon me and my husband (politically one of his supporters),
in hearing a pronouncement from him on a subject, which to us was vital,
and had been pressing heavily on our hearts. I allude to a great speech
which Mr. Gladstone made in Liverpool during the last period of the
Civil War in America, the Abolitionist War. Our friend spoke with his
accustomed fiery eloquence wholly in favour of the spirit and aims of
the combatants of the Southern States, speaking of their struggle as one
on behalf of liberty and independence, and wishing them success. Not one
word to indicate that the question which, like burning lava in the heart
of a volcano, was causing that terrible upheaval in America, had found
any place in that great man's mind, or had even "cast its shadow before"
in his thoughts. It appeared as though he had not even taken in the fact
of the existence of those four millions of slaves, the uneasy clanking
of whose chains had long foreboded the approach of the avenging hand of
the Deliverer. This obscured perception of the question was that of a
great part, if not of the majority, of the Press of that day, and of
most persons of the "privileged" classes; but that _he_, a trusted
leader of so many, should be suffering from such an imperfection of
mental vision, was to us an astonishment and sorrow. As we left that
crowded hall, my companion and I, we looked at each other in silent
amazement, and for a long time we found no words.

As I look back now, there seems in this incident some explanation of Mr.
Gladstone's total oblivion of the interests of our loyal native subjects
of the Transvaal at the time when he handed them over to masters whose
policy towards them was well known. These poor natives had appealed to
the British Government, had trusted it, and were deceived by it.